King for a year

KING FOR A YEAR: John King, who takes the reins from Education Secretary Arne Duncan next month, has a huge to-do list — and not a lot of time. Obviously, he’ll spend a good chunk of the Obama administration’s final year in office working to regulate and implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. But that’s just part of a much broader agenda. King recently told Morning Education that he has three major priorities for 2016. For one, he wants to build on the administration’s focus on “equity and excellence.” “We’ve made tremendous progress, but we have a long distance to travel. Even though we’ve cut the number of ‘dropout factories’ in half, we still have high schools that are graduating 50 percent of their students. We still have many students who don’t have access to advanced coursework ... but the new law gives us some new tools to improve that.” He said he also hopes to maintain the civil rights legacy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act while setting “guardrails” for states’ new flexibility under ESSA and supporting states on implementation.

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— Second, King said he hopes to elevate the teaching profession and improve teacher preparation. (A long-delayed final rule overhauling how teachers are prepared for the classroom has been expected this month, but some education policy watchers tell Morning Education they think it could come next month between the transition to a new secretary and the recent passage of ESSA.) “We’ve got to make sure that preparation for teaching is as strong as possible,” he said, “that all teachers are prepared to work successfully with English-language learners and students with disabilities and diverse classrooms, that new teachers get good support and mentoring during their first years in the profession, that teachers have an opportunity to get good professional development and growth opportunities and opportunities to lead from the classroom.”

— And finally, King said he wants to focus on college completion. “We’ve made a lot of progress around access and affordability,” he said. “When you look at the student debt crisis, the typical student who defaults has debt, but not a degree. So what we want to try to do is support students towards completion. We want to make sure that colleges and universities are smart about how they provide support services … and we want to scale that up.”

IN TODAY’S FEDERAL REGISTER: The Education Department published a notice that kicks off the rulemaking process under ESSA. It says the department wants recommendations and advice from states, educators, advocates, members of the business community and others on regulations under Title I. And the department is considering negotiated rulemaking for assessments and "supplement, not supplant" language, both of which are subject to that process under the law. Take a look: http://1.usa.gov/1JpixhJ.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning Education will be on a holiday hiatus starting Christmas Eve through Jan. 4. In the meantime, keep up with Pro Education news: http://politico.pro/1LXrTBZ. And make sure you send along your education predictions for 2016!

DIGGING INTO DISTANCE ED ENROLLMENT: A new analysis of fall 2014 IPEDS data finds that more students are enrolling exclusively in online courses while overall enrollments are declining — with nearly half of participation occurring at public colleges. Looking at the trends with “more confidence” now that the Education Department has released distance ed numbers three years in a row, data whizzes at the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies note that while private non-profits grew strictly online enrollments by 22 percent in two years, for-profits saw an 11 percent decline over the same period. While the authors acknowledge concerns with the IPEDS reporting methodology, they say, “it is possible that the 2014 data is more accurate, as institutions have had more time to refine their reporting.” Check back after New Year’s for data tables and graphics on the most interesting statistics:http://bit.ly/1Oj4Ap2.

NO CANDIDATE LEFT BEHIND: Hillary Clinton is making good on her promise to visit a tiny high school in eastern Iowa today, The Des Moines Register reports. She’ll be speaking at Keota High School, where she agreed to appear after a committed group of students repeatedly invited her. The students wrote letters, tweeted and traveled to Clinton’s campaign rallies to press their case. More: http://dmreg.co/1U0sQu4.

— ICYMI: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who refused [http://bit.ly/1QDDw3N] to sign a pledge earlier this year saying he’d dump the Common Core if elected president, dropped out of the presidential race on Monday after failing to attract any significant support — despite a number of memorable zingers, POLITICO’s Katie Glueck reports: http://politi.co/1Zlemc5.

LANDMARK TITLE IX RULING: A federal judge in California has ruled that Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, also includes sexual orientation. It appears to be the first time a federal judge has made such a ruling, Buzzfeed reports. It’s a position on the law that has been adopted and enforced by the Obama administration — the Justice and Education Departments have long said that the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students are protected under Title IX. The California case was brought by two women who allege that Pepperdine University “discriminated against and harassed them” because of their perceived sexual orientation. More: http://bzfd.it/1O4Ee8k.

— A new draft policy from the Nebraska School Activities Association on transgender student athletes requires students to demonstrate “consistent gender identity,” the Omaha World-Herald reports. Authors of the draft policy said it reflects the “Midwestern values” of the state: http://bit.ly/1OTDGTt.

STATES ACT ON TEACHER SHORTAGES: An Oklahoma task force dedicated to addressing the state’s teacher shortage recently delivered its initial recommendations to the state board, state lawmakers and the governor. The shortage has resulted in nearly 1,000 emergency certifications awarded in Oklahoma this school year, according to the state. All of the recommendations made by the task force would require legislative action. One of those ideas: provide scholarships to cover certification exam fees and paychecks and other financial incentives to student teachers who sign up to teach in high-need schools. The full report:http://bit.ly/1T4r9vM.

— Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee has also called on state lawmakers to address a teacher shortage during the upcoming legislative session. He pitched a bill to raise the minimum salary for starting teachers from $35,700 to $40,000 a year while giving all other teachers a 1 percent raise, among other measures. Inslee suggested eliminating four tax breaks in order to pay for the proposals. More on his proposal here:http://1.usa.gov/1QvAJd1.

— Speaking of Washington, the Washington State Charter Schools Association has formed a PAC in the wake of the state Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year that the state charter school law is unconstitutional. The PAC has already contributed $20,000 to reform-minded candidates. “Along with partners, including Democrats for Education Reform, League of Education Voters, Stand for Children and The Washington Roundtable, WA Charters expects to raise more than $500,000 by the end of session,” the group said in a release. Public charter school advocates have been hoping state lawmakers will come up with a funding stream to keep charter schools in Washington afloat.

EDU-PINIONS CONSIDER CAMPUS PROTESTERS: Students trying to combat structural inequities by demanding renamed buildings, faculty sensitivity training, ideological litmus tests for campus speakers and shielding from writings that make them feel unsafe are displaying “a startling inversion of logic in the progression from the 1960s to today,” American historian Josh Zeitz writes in POLITICO Magazine. Whereas boomers sought to be treated as emancipated adults, Zeitz argues that in 2015, students seek the opposite. “Today’s protesters may think they are marching in the footsteps of those who came before,” he says. “In fact, they are undoing much of that generation’s enduring accomplishment”:http://politi.co/1NyCMJD.

— But, in a Rolling Stone piecethat opens with the same anecdote from Yale University, student activism historian Angus Johnston begs to differ. “Why are such ordinary disagreements suddenly being cast as threats to the American university, even America itself?” Johnston writes. Countering criticism that today’s protesters are censoring campus speech, Johnston argues that they “are raising urgent questions about the proper character of the university, initiating debates that will only grow broader and more important as the campus movement continues to develop.” [http://rol.st/1YwT2xS] Earlier this month, Johnston wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education about protesters’ historical progression from “hey, hey, LBJ” to “Black Lives Matter”:http://bit.ly/1NHRFrc.

— Over in The New York Times, Demos fellow Donovan X. Ramsey says the 2016 Democratic candidates’ responses — or lack thereof — to activists associated with Black Lives Matter underestimate the number of voters behind the movement. “While many of us have reverence for the political gains made by those who came before us, we are not bound by their politics or approach to civic engagement,” Ramsey says. “If the leading Democratic candidates want the support of this increasingly influential segment of the electorate, they’ll have to forgo their usual youth and black outreach tactics for ones that take seriously the intersection of those identities”:http://nyti.ms/1kcykWD.

— Outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan writes in a post on Medium that higher education faculty should reflect the country’s diversity. It’s one action that colleges and universities can take amid debates over racial harassment on campuses across the country, he writes. “I urge all of our campus leaders to examine what steps they can take now to increase diversity in their ranks,” he writes. “To do this also requires us to work collectively to build a fuller pool of graduate students preparing to join faculty ranks, and of students at every level prepared to pursue these paths.” More: http://bit.ly/1J2E6Wy.

REPORT ROLL CALL

— More than half of teachers surveyed said they feel they should pay fair share fees to help cover the costs associated with negotiating a contract and representing all employees. The results come as the Supreme Court prepares for Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. More from Educators 4 Excellence: http://bit.ly/1U0B6dR.

— Neuroscience won’t improve teaching and learning, a new paper from The Brookings Institution says. Education research that’s grounded in the behavioral and cognitive sciences is much more likely to improve educational outcomes:http://brook.gs/1lSZ93K.

— For the first time, the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s annual Monitoring the Future Survey finds that high school seniors are more likely to use pot on a daily basis than smoke cigarettes. Twelfth graders are using less of other substances, however, including prescription opioid pain meds, alcohol, and synthetic weed. The problem: Smoking pot every day can have harmful effects on the developing brains of teenagers, said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the director of NIDA.http://1.usa.gov/1Ykz4pZ.

SYLLABUS

— Most New York City elementary schools are violating disabilities act, federal investigation finds. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1UZVxIU

— Republican Gov. Sam Brownback says he and many Kansas legislators aren't ready to consider big increases in aid to public schools. The Associated Press: http://bit.ly/1kdbyOg

— High school juniors in Montana will no longer be required to take the annual Smarter Balanced standardized test, Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau said. They will instead take the ACT. MTPR: http://bit.ly/1m4DWnC

— Texas universities would violate the state's new campus carry law if they banned guns in dormitories, Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a non-binding opinion. The Texas Tribune: http://bit.ly/1Oi2pfa

— Louisiana voucher school scores improve in program's third year. The Times-Picayune: http://bit.ly/1mxbqLn

— Tennessee’s Achievement School District takeover process a “scam,” say parents who worked with state-run district. Chalkbeat Tennessee: http://bit.ly/1mxbhHO

— Michelle King will head L.A. schools as the search for a superintendent continues. Los Angeles Times: http://lat.ms/1Oi2D64

About The Author : Caitlin Emma

Caitlin Emma is a budget and appropriations reporter for POLITICO Pro. Prior to that, she covered education policy for Pro.

Caitlin graduated from UConn in 2011. As a reporter in Connecticut, she covered everything from state policy and politics, to police, courts, community book clubs and restaurant health inspections. She’s also a loyal UConn Huskies fan.

Caitlin donated her bone marrow in 2010 and has spearheaded a number of bone marrow donor drives. Ask her about it, and she’ll gladly convince you to register as a donor.

A Massachusetts native, Caitlin now lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her dog Roxy and husband Bill.